An inter-ministerial committee commissioned by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu voted to deport 400 children of migrant workers. The remaining 800 out of the 1,200 children in question will be allowed to remain in Israel.

According to the approved criteria, Hebrew-speaking children enrolled in the Israeli school system, whom have been in Israel for more than five years, were born in Israel or entered before the age of thirteen, are in first grade or higher, and whose parents entered the country legally, will be granted permanent status.

Thirteen ministers approved the vote, ten voted against the recommendations, and four abstained. The agreement applies only to children whose parents entered Israel legally. Children who do not meet the criteria will be forced to leave the country within a month, together with their families.

"You can't simply put a child and its mother, against their will, on a plane out of the country to somewhere the child doesn't know," says Noa Kaufman, a campaigner from the organization Israeli Children. “They live here, they have friends here but now the government wants to separate them from everything they know,” she said.

Families with children who meet the criteria will be asked to submit a request, together with documentation, to the Interior Ministry within 21 days, per the inter-ministerial committee's recommendations, according to the Israeli news daily Haaretz.

 Human rights groups argued that 21 days, particularly in the summer months when school is not in session, is an impossibly short period of time to produce the necessary documents, so the Interior Ministry added a clause giving those who meet the criteria an additional 21 days to produce the documentation.

 Welfare Minister Isaac Herzog, who has been adamantly opposed to large-scale child deportation, abstained from the vote, saying, "I didn't vote in favor [of the proposal] because despite the improvements, which I supported, I could not accept deporting a group of 5-year-old children.”

 According to Israeli government estimates, there are between 250,000-400,000 migrant workers currently in Israel (30% from Thailand, 18% from the Philippines, 10% from China, 6% from Nepal, and 5% from Romania), half of them without a legal status. And although the government issued 120,000 foreign work permits last year, a number of Israeli government officials say they ultimately want to phase out migrant labor.

“We have created a Jewish and democratic nation, and we cannot let it turn into a nation of foreign workers,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at a conference of the Israel Manufacturers Association in January.

“Saying foreign workers are diluting the Jewish state is racism,” said Nitzan Horowitz, a member of the Knesset and a critic of the migrant worker policy. “On one hand, Israel is bringing them here and making money off their backs, and on other they face all sorts of harassment.”

Foreign workers are often willing to work much harder than the average Israeli for longer hours and at a lower salary (40% lower on average, according to the Bank of Israel), according to a recent article in the Jerusalem Post.

UNICEF Israel, the organization in charge of enforcing the International Convention on the Rights of the Child (ICRC) in Israel, protested the cabinet's decision, calling it a "blatant violation" of the ICRC, which Israel signed with 200 other states worldwide, according to Haaretz.

 "Israel must formulate a humane immigration policy and stop the senseless revolving door policy, that wants to deport migrant workers and their children, on the one hand, and bring in new ones instead, on the other hand," UNICEF Israel said in a statement.

Monday, 02 August 2010 14:04 Tania Kepler for the Alternative Information Center (AIC)